When Turkey entered the NATO defense alliance in 1952, it was a major coup for Europe and for America. Turkey had control of the strategically important Bosphorus Strait and the Dardanelles. The NATO alliance could therefore exercise a preemptively tight grip on the Soviet Union's only direct access to Western warm-water ports. Furthermore, Turkey was a secular doorway into the resource-rich Middle East.

But it's now 2015. The Soviet Union has been dead and gone for a quarter of a century. The Middle East is an absolute mess. And 63 years after joining the alliance, Turkey has turned into one of NATO's and America's biggest liabilities in the region. Indeed, there seems to be no hope of re-balancing this alliance to make it a positive one for the West. Click link below for more: